Abstract
This study provides a comprehensive dataset (FAIRUrbTemp) that addresses the lack of high-resolution urban air temperature data across Europe. It compiles sub-hourly street-level air temperature data from 811 low-cost to commercial sensors across several European cities and offers data in a quality-controlled, standardized format in sub-hourly, hourly, and daily resolutions. In addition, detailed metadata, as an important source of information in urban studies, is provided at network, station, and measurement levels. This pan-European dataset is rigorously quality-controlled using a serially automatic method applicable to diverse city-scale air temperature data, which identifies systematic and minor inconsistencies to enhance reliability. Expert-based validation shows that the QC reliably identifies problematic measurements, while its performance varies across urban and climatic settings due to local environmental and instrumental effects. To ensure transparency, the results of the quality control are provided to the user together with the original value in the dataset. The validated FAIRUrbTemp is a valuable resource for urban climate studies, with direct applications in validating microclimate models, assessing heat-health risks, and informing climate-adaptive urban planning.
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Data availability
All data used in this study is publicly accessible online under the CC-BY licence via the following links: https://doi.org/10.48620/93247.
Code availability
The data processing and QC routines are written in R (v.4.3.1) programming language. The entire code used is freely available at GitHub (https://github.com/StarAmini/QC_URBNET) under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Grant CA20108, the Swiss National Science Foundation (IZCOZ0213362) and MeteoSwiss in the framework of GCOS Switzerland. We are grateful for the freely available global products: ERA5-Land climate reanalysis data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Climate Data Store at (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/). S.A. would like to thank colleagues at GiUB (Geographisches Institut, Universität Bern) and A. Jacobs and T. Vergauwen at the Ghent University-Department of Physics and Astronomy for help with formatting and quality control advice. Amsterdam Atmospheric Monitoring Supersite has been financially supported by the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS-Institute, VIR16002), by the municipality of Amsterdam (grant AAMS2.0), by NWO grants ESOCCS 027.012.103 and 864.14.007, and from the 4TU-program HERITAGE (HEat Robustness In relation To AGEing cities), funded by the High Tech for a Sustainable Future (HTSF) program of 4TU, the federation of the four technical universities in The Netherlands. We also thank Bert Heusinkveld (WUR) for his efforts on the AAMS measurement network. The authors are grateful for the availability of temperature data from the Bern network [https://boris.unibe.ch/161882/], the Berlin network [https://uco.berlin/en/dataportal/], the Birmingham network [https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/5391a10e4f644229bc138f8a95ca42f1/] and the Freiburg network [https://zenodo.org/records/12732552/].
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S.A. processed the data and undertook quality control of the data with A.H. and J.F. S.A. collected raw observed data, and all the coauthors helped in sharing their datasets. S.A. wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All the authors were involved in discussing the quality control method and results, and all reviewed and contributed to writing the manuscript.
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Amini, S., Huerta, A., Franke, J. et al. Comprehensive compilation and quality assessment of street-level urban air temperature measurements across European networks. Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06804-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06804-4
